Friday, 13 May 2016

Big City, Small Town, or Rural?

Despite church decline, church planting continues at a fast
pace. In the cities of the UK the church landscape has a generous number of
recently established, glossy, relatively wealthy, contemporary churches. It
would appear something in church growth is working.

Reflecting on current trends in evangelicalism, in the light
of a visit to Scotland by an American prosperity preacher, David Robertson of
the Free Church of Scotland suggested that modern-day church planting was
motivated by a similar prosperity ethos [1]. That is, churches prefer to plant
in the big cities, where there were plenty of people and influential networks,
rather than the smaller towns of the UK. He suggested the reasoning may be due
to the “trickle down” theory, that once churches are established in the big
centres of London, Edinburgh etc, then Christianity will eventually trickle
down to the likes of Hull and Kilmarnock [1].

It is true that new religions use big centres with their changing
populations as their bases. Christianity started this way, and that is the current
state of Islam in the UK. But Britain has a Christian history, and there are
Christians (still) in most towns and villages. Church planting here is about
re-evangelisation, not introducing a new faith. David Robertson compared the
contemporary approach with that of the Independent Methodists, who planted
their churches in small, rural and poor communities, and did so quite
effectively despite the seemingly limited prospects of such places [1].

So what is the best planting strategy, go to the big, or go
to the small? I will try and show a system dynamics view of church planting
using some of the church growth models that I have developed [2]. Three models
should be enough to capture the difference between the contemporary and
historic approaches to planting.

Supply & Demand Model

In this model the church supplies its religion in a society where at any time there are some people who demand it. Supply is according to
the size of the church, reinforcing loop R,
figure 1, and demand is according to the size of the unbelieving society,
balancing loop B1. Initially demand
exceeds supply; thus early growth is determined by how well the church supplies
the needs of those seeking a church. However at some point demand will fall
below supply, as the pool of potential converts shrinks, thus slowing church growth.
Church size reaches a limit when demand B1
matches the leaving process B2 [3].

Figure 1: Supply and Demand Model of Church Growth [3]

Thus to get a bigger church, a church plant needs to be in a
bigger community, for example a city. The bigger the city, the more the demand,
the more converted. Thus as long as the new church can compete favourably with
the existing ones in the city then it will have a big demand. The key is to do
things better than the others, be it worship, discipleship, Sunday Schools, so
that it is attractive to the whole city, not just a local area. It may also be
attractive to those in other churches as well, perhaps hastening the decline of
the ineffective ones.

This suggests that planting in the big cities is the best
strategy for a new church, if its growth is the only criterion [4]. But things
are not as simple as that. There are other limits to congregational growth.

Bounded Resource Model

A church may face limits on its growth before the effects of
demand are significant. Most churches cannot increase their supply in
proportion to their size because conversion and recruitment involve generating
resources, loop R, figure 2. As they
grow they become less effective at increasing these resources further, loop B3. Such resources as Sunday Schools, teaching programmes,
physical space, organisational complexity and friendship networks all become
harder to increase the bigger they become [5].

Figure 2: Bounded Resource Model of Church Growth [5]

Thus the church’s growth is limited for internal reasons,
leaving much of the external demand untapped. In figure 2 the potential demand is made
infinite to drive home the point! Of course such churches are big and lively,
and may not realise it is they, rather than the lack of potential converts,
that have slowed their growth. Growth stops when the effect of recruitment, loop
R, has been reduced by the
organisational “lethargy” loop B3, to
the point where it matches the leaving B1.

The church in the big city now has less of an advantage because the new church plant needs to be very well managed to ensure that potential
demand is met. This favours the wealthy contemporary church, but it could also
suggest that smaller cities and large towns would be just as suitable places to
plant. The extra potential demand the large city offers cannot be realistically
tapped.

Limited Enthusiasm Model

The flaw in the above arguments is that they can apply to
any organisation, not just a church. Surely there needs to be something different about the way a church grows!
David Robertson makes the point that the Independent Methodists came out of the
revivals of the 18th and 19th centuries [1]. They grew
not because of the size of the demand
(there was little), or the effectiveness of their church organisations (they were not professionals), but the
efficacy of their individual Christians,
who were so full of the revival life of Christ that they imparted it to others.

Growth by infectious faith is captured in the Limited
Enthusiasm Model [6]. Here only a subset of the church, the enthusiasts, make
converts, loop R figure 3, but some
of those converts become enthusiasts, thus the lively Christians reproduce
themselves in others. Although enthusiasts do not stay effective for ever, loop
B2, they do so long enough for the
revival contagion to keep being passed on, effectively creating demand, loop B1,
rather than waiting for it.

Figure 3: Limited Enthusiasm Model of Church Growth [6]

This mechanism matches the experience of the church in the
New Testament. They did not seek demand for salvation through Christ, or
organise a great church to attract people – they went into places and created
demand through the Holy Spirit in individual believers. The faith spread like a
disease, adding to their number, and they spent the rest the time trying to put
any sort of organisation on the ensuing mess, hence the need for the New
Testament letters!

Such a church in revival is therefore more effective where
people have the most meaningful contacts. The place you stop to talk to those
you meet, rather than pass a thousand in the street. The place where you see
the same people over and over again, building a relationship, not the place where you may not see
the same person again, hoping to attract a stranger. Essentially, the village
is a better place than the city. The small town is better than the big one.

Go through the history of revivals and see how many
flourished in the small places, rather than the big. The Welsh revival centres
were Llangeitho, Loughor and New Quay, not Cardiff and Swansea.

Evangelism is primarily personal not organisational. It
seeks to persuade people not attract them. Thus the best place for a new church plant is the small community not the large. Of course it requires long-term
commitment, and it does require the reviving work of the Holy Spirit. But there
will be no recovery of the church in the UK without revival because church decline
is caused by the lack of revival, as I have tried to show many times [7]. The rural
communities clearly show this need of revival. Sadly the big churches of the
larger cities, thriving on good organisation and large populations, mask this lack of the Spirit; and
as David Robertson put it, act as a cover
for decline [1].

Rural Areas

I often travel through the rural parts of Wales and Scotland
and see so many areas with no church at all, just closed or converted buildings.
In those where a church remains it is usually an established one – part of a denomination
now facing division through the spread of the new ideology that promotes sexual
diversity [8]. As a result many more will close, or become unacceptable to a
Christian seeking a church with Biblical standards.There is a desperate need for rural church planting; that is
for revived Christians to move to these places.

Ah says someone – “I will plant the church when the revival
comes”. No! The revival will come when you go and plant! Paul the apostle did
not wait for the Spirit to come before he went somewhere new – he went, and as
he preached the Spirit fell. It is a time to go, not a time to wait – the
church has been waiting very effectively for far too long.

References and Notes

[1] Creflo Dollar, The
Independent Methodists, the Gospel of Power, Health and Wealth, and Revival of
the Church in Britain Today. The Wee Flea, David Robertson, 8/5/2016.

[4] It could be argued that the growth of the planted church should
not be the only criterion. The needs of the lost, who are in small places as well
as large, and the effect of its competition on the existing churches are also
important, to name but a few. I am deliberately staying clear of discussing the
moral case of planting a new church to compete with existing ones!

[5] The Bounded Resource model of church growth is described in
the blog: